Study ranks Texas among the nation’s least-educated states

Texas landed at No. 40 on a new ranking of U.S. states based on their education levels. Researchers with online finance site WalletHub compared all 50 states across 18 metrics, including educational attainment, school quality and achievement gaps between genders and races.

The Lone Star State is a bit of an outlier in the rankings. Texans’ average level of education attainment is abysmal, putting the state second to last when it comes to the share of the population over 25 with a high-school diploma.

But, despite that major shortfall, Texas still managed to rank No. 17 in quality of education. Researchers based that overall score on Blue Ribbon Schools per capita, average quality of universities and other factors.

The report comes as Texas trumpets meteoric economic growth and major new investments from corporations including Tesla, Hewlett Packard and Charles Schwab.

Even so, Clifton Conrad, a professor of higher education at the University of Wisconsin, warned in WalletHub’s report that high-quality education is essential to states’ economic growth. What’s more, cities with better-educated populations are better suited to handle severe economic shocks such as a recession, he added.

“Education policy should be, without exception, an integral part of the economic development strategy of states,” Conrad said.

San Antonio ranked as the least-educated big city in Texas in a separate 2022 WalletHub analysis.

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This article appears in Feb 8-21, 2023.